A Feeling of Belonging

Asian American Women's Public Culture, 1930-1960

Shirley Lim

Publication Year: 2005

When we imagine the activities of Asian American women in the mid-twentieth century, our first thoughts are not of skiing, beauty pageants, magazine reading, and sororities. Yet, Shirley Jennifer Lim argues, these are precisely the sorts of leisure practices many second generation Chinese, Filipina, and Japanese American women engaged in during this time.

In A Feeling of Belonging, Lim highlights the cultural activities of young, predominantly unmarried Asian American women from 1930 to 1960. This period marks a crucial generation—the first in which American-born Asians formed a critical mass and began to make their presence felt in the United States. Though they were distinguished from previous generations by their American citizenship, it was only through these seemingly mundane “American”activities that they were able to overcome two-dimensional stereotypes of themselves as kimono-clad “Orientals.”

Lim traces the diverse ways in which these young women sought claim to cultural citizenship, exploring such topics as the nation's first Asian American sorority, Chi Alpha Delta; the cultural work of Chinese American actress Anna May Wong; Asian American youth culture and beauty pageants; and the achievement of fame of three foreign-born Asian women in the late 1950s. By wearing poodle skirts, going to the beach, and producing magazines, she argues, they asserted not just their American-ness, but their humanity: a feeling of belonging.

Contents

Preface

To paraphrase Alice Walker citing Toni Morrison, I wished to
create a book that I should have been able to read in school, but had not
found.1 Since there were no models for what I murkily envisioned, I considered
“acceptable” topics, ranging from the social history of Chinese
American women in Los Angeles to a labor/organizational history of
Asian Americans and entertainment. After...

Introduction

Lightbulbs flash. Pop! This way Miss Wong, over here. She
smiles, turns, then smiles at the camera from a different angle. Her straw
coolie hat is set at a rakish angle. Fashion writers note the details of her
cream suit that is cut in the current Western style with Chinese fastenings,
her rectangular clutch handbag made in Paris, customized with her Chinese
name, Frosted Yellow Willow, in Chinese...

1. “ A Feeling of Belonging”: Chi Alpha Delta, 1928–1941

Spring 1941. The sun sparkles and the flowers glow against
the terracotta-colored brick buildings at the University of California,
Los Angeles. Imagine, if you will, that you are a new member of the
sorority Chi Alpha Delta. You have just been initiated into membership
with your eager pledge class and have just discovered that your sorority
has the campus’s highest grade point average.1 For your first Spring Formal
dance, your sorors suggest smooth dates...

2. “I Protest”: Anna May Wong and the Performance of Modernity

In the 1939 movie King of Chinatown, one first glimpses Chinese
American actress Anna May Wong putting down her surgical implements,
taking off her cap and mask after a successful emergency room operation.
1King of Chinatown underscores the professional competence of
Wong’s character, Dr.Mary Ling, for immediately after the surgery the Bay
Area hospital director offers her the position...

3. Shortcut to Glamour: Popular Culture in a Consumer Society [Includes Image Plates]

This chapter examines the paradox alluded to in the above
quotations: in the post–World War II era, Asian Americans claimed
modernity, cultural citizenship, and civil rights through consumer and
youth cultures. According to many cultural critics, dominant hegemonic
society uses consumer culture to make society accede to its will, not
through coercion but by making its power seem natural and legitimate.
Why, then, did the language and narratives...

4. Contested Beauty: Asian American Beauty Culture during the Cold War

In the post–World War II era, leading Asian American civil
rights groups such as the Chinese American Citizens League and the Caballeros
de Dimas Alang centered their annual meetings on beauty
pageants. As the above Asian American press excerpts show, beauty
pageants enjoyed tremendous salience. Other contemporary queen contests
ranged from the one that selected the Cotton Queen to the Miss Portrait
of Spring of Chicago, and from the Seattle...

5. Riding the Crest of an Oriental Wave: Foreign-Born Asian “Beauty”

In the span of a little over a year (1958–1959), Miyoshi Umeki
won an Academy Award for best supporting actress, France Nuyen graced
the cover of Life magazine, and Akiko Kojima was crowned Miss Universe.
As Los Angeles’ Japanese American newspaper Kashu Mainichi observed,
“in many fields of the arts the U.S. is riding the crest of an Oriental wave.”1
What distinguishes the late 1950s from the early Cold War era is that in the
later period foreign-born Asian women gained...

6. Conclusion

Shortly after the demise of Scene magazine, in 1955 the Saturday
Evening Post published an article on “California’s Amazing Japanese”
that echoed Scene’s main theme: negating the racial hatreds that brought
about internment by demonstrating liberal-democratic ideal consumer
citizenship. The Saturday Evening Post profiled model Japanese American
citizens and used that as evidence to condemn internment. Mainstream
society thus mirrored Asian American aspirations...

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